Customer Reviews

Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem

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Dan Leno And The Limehouse Golem is quite simply a masterpiece. Every aspect of the novel is remarkable. It's a whodunit, though it suggests a couple of credible suspects right at the start. It even convicts its central character to death by hanging before we have even got to know her. Clearly things are not going to be obvious. The novel is also a study in character, especially that of its central actor, Lambeth Marsh Lizzie, later Mrs Elizabeth Cree. It's also an evocation of London in the late nineteenth century, complete with colours, smells, vistas and perspectives. It's a highly literary work, ever conscious of its place beside the genres it skirts. Overall, it's a wonderful example of how form can be used as inventively as plot to create a story.

The novel has a series of interlocking stands. In one our anti-heroine, Lizzie, is accused of the murder of John Cree, her husband. In another, John Cree's diary reveals certain secrets that not only he would have wanted to hide. In a third strand, we learn of Lambeth Marsh Lizzie's past, how she came to a life in the theatre and how she met her husband. A fourth strand follows the career of Dan Leno, a music hall player, worshipper of the silent clown Grimaldi and mentor of Lizzie's stage life. And in a fifth strand we see how, in a great city like London, our paths inevitably cross those of great thinkers, writers, artists and, of course, history itself. Peter Ackroyd thus has his characters cross the paths of a writer, George Gissing, and a thinker of note, one Karl Marx, as they tramp the streets of Limehouse after a day at the library.

As usual, sex has a lot to do with the relationships in the book. It is usually on top, but here it also comes underneath and sometimes on the side of events. Mrs Cree is accused of poisoning her husband. Their married life has been far from conventional, but are its inadequacies the motive for a series of brutal killings of prostitutes and others in the Limehouse area? As a result of the curious placement of certain trophies, the killings are attributed in the popular mind to a golem, a mythical creature made of clay that can change it shape at will. Karl Marx examines the Jewish myths surrounding the subject. Others steer clear of the subject.

Lizzie continues on the stage until she meets her husband. She learns much stagecraft from Dan Leno and eventually resolves to help her husband to complete the play over which he has unsuccessfully laboured. When the book's plot resolves, we are surprised, but then everything makes such perfect sense. And in a real piece of insight, Peter Ackroyd likens the mass murderer to Romaticism perfected, the ultimate triumph of individualism. There is much to stimulate the mind in this thriller.

A reader of this review might suspect that Dan leno And The Limehouse Golem is a difficult read, a book whose diverse strands never converge. But quite the contrary is true: it comes together in a wonderful, fast-flowing manner to a resolution that is both highly theatrical yet thoroughly credible. Read it many times.

Dan Leno was variety hall entertainer in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Limehouse Golem is a serial killer along the lines of Jack the Ripper. Around these two poles Ackroyd has spun a story of an abused girl who is taken under Leno's wing and after a successful career on the stage, marries and then murders her journalist admirer. The story is a meditation on the links between murder and entertaining the popular imagination, on revenge and pride.
The book takes a little while to get a grip on, consisting as it does of several different narratives, but halfway through it shifts down a gear and really takes off.

Elizabeth Cree is hanged at the beginning of this book for the murder of her husband, but was she guilty?

We are then taken into the Victorian world of theatre and gross murder.

Ackroyd writes about London superbly and he has managed to combine this with a good crime novel, some wonderfully horrible writing here.

I loved the realism and interest woven into this novel about an Old London.There is an excellent history of London written by Dan Ackroyd that is excellent and I wonder if he'd read it because he has a great grip on the atmosphere/social history sense of London.As well as bringing to life the backstage life in theatre or the clown.
A somewhat farfetched ending where the story goes off track but it doesn't matter as it's right at the end in any case. By a stretch i was able to counter that Lizzie Cree had pulled off the last dupe in a hidden irony about theatre as full of illusions and so we the reader duped, as the author. This yet another layer to an intriging book.

"Here we are again!" - these are the last words of Elizabeth Cree and primary character of the book and over time we will find how true these words are. I have never read any book by Ackroyd before but the first experience was pleasantly surprising. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem is a neat little book which can be praised in the best possible fashion. We will find as history repeats itself through generations and through the acts of the generation it's like a play being reenacted.
I found the book in a garage sale and was thrown back a little by the picture in the cover but once I started reading it then there was no stopping. The author must have done enormous studies on Victorian London - the environment, the pulse of the society and the characters in that society.
Actually from the very beginning (or something close to it) we already know the villain, the motive but still there are some details left in the painting which forces the reader to keep on reading. The few primary characters in the book are Dan Leno, Elizabeth Cree her husband John Cree and well well well Karl Marx, George Gissing (quite a mix and range). The author effortlessly travels from one decade to another or from one year to another but strangely as a reader you never lose track of time. His descriptions of London in the 1880s are as good as it can get.
If you get a chance read this book and you will love it. --This text refers to the edition

The concept of time folding in and repeating itself, retracing ones own steps, spreads throughout this book. Starting with a woman lead to the gallows, her last words "Here we go again", echo strangely.

An excellent read, funny, scary, tragic, enthralling. Recommended.

An excellent twisting novel that leads the reader further in to understand the depths of the characters minds. I loved the academic references and the almost parallel stories that work in partnership. I will have to read it again..soon

Peter Ackroyd is a great writer. His seemless mixture of styles, techniques, a brooding sense of place and time jumps creates some of the best fiction being written today. However, that being said, I find that this novel left me out and did not engage or make me care about any of the characters. The same complaint has been made about Stanley Kubrick's movies. I can appreciate the master's touch, but it is sometimes too cold.